


I'll jump right in and pull my pin

by nasaplates



Category: EXO (Band), K-pop
Genre: Bikers, Blood, Blood Kink, Bruises, Choking, Dom/sub, Dysfunctional Relationships, Knifeplay, M/M, Marking, Police Brutality, Politics, Semi-Public Sex, Unsafe Sex, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-05
Updated: 2019-03-05
Packaged: 2019-11-12 07:10:33
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,385
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18006239
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nasaplates/pseuds/nasaplates
Summary: The first time he sees Lay, it's in a seedy bar, and they're both young and angry at the world.





	I'll jump right in and pull my pin

**Author's Note:**

  * For [figure8](https://archiveofourown.org/users/figure8/gifts).



> len sent me a tweet and said "do something with this" so, I did. blame her. 
> 
> PLEASE heed the tags, this is. A Lot. they're kind of fucked up. I'm sorry?
> 
> [brief mentions of background baekxing, minseok/yifan, xiuchen, and seho]

The first time he sees Lay, it's in a seedy bar, and they're both young and angry at the world. He's wearing a leather jacket, skin tight black pants, a piercing in his eyebrow and his lower lip, flipping a butterfly knife through the air while scanning the room and occasionally chiming in on the conversation happening at the table. Kris thinks he'd like to feel that knife pressed to the skin of his throat. Lay makes eye contact with him, and the knife stops moving.

Half an hour later and Kris is in the disgusting bar bathroom, on his knees, Lay Zhang's cock in his mouth. The knife is tucked safe in a pocket, Lay's hand fisted in his hair, the other on his face so he can feel the stretch of his lips as he comes down his throat. 

When Kris stands up, he presses the come into Lay's mouth with his tongue, fucking it back into him.

When Lay pulls him off with rough tugs on his cock, he bites the piercing on Lay's lip and pulls until Lay bites back and he can taste blood.

Half an hour after that and Yifan is a newly minted member of a biker gang. On reflex he tells them his name is Kris, but Zitao looks at him, level, smirk playing across his face, says in Mandarin “Your true name, punk.” Eleven Asian-American faces look back at him, most of them Korean, he knows, but still. They understand. When he speaks his name like his mother does, a weight lifts off his shoulders he wasn't truly aware he was carrying.

***

They meet regularly, roaring up to that same seedy bar, or at one of their apartments, clad in leather and metal and rage. 

None of the rest ever mention the way Yifan and Lay (Yixing, Zhang Yixing, Lay an alter ego of sorts, not a catering to Anglo racist inflexibility) stayed after the others left, or disappeared, one following the other to the bathroom, to the alley. Never mention the way their mouths are red and raw, hair disheveled. 

Yifan never mentions the way sometimes it's Baekhyun Lay gives the significant look to, Baekhyun that comes back with a voice raw from cock. Lay never mentions the way sometimes Minseok corners Yifan in a never-used storeroom and shoves him to his knees. They're both rougher with each other, though, after someone else has touched them.

It takes a few months before he's really trusted, which he expected. They're anarchists, or at least that's what the newspapers would call what they do, the way they set off explosions in the financial district, the molotov cocktails that they toss through corporate windows. They prefer to call it direct action. Yifan isn't sure he knows the difference, isn't sure he cares. Lay does, snorting derisively at the concept of anarchism. He teaches Yifan the difference, patiently providing him with concepts, with literature, with Marx and Lenin and Mao. Yifan never tells him he doesn't care whose name gets put on the theory if what they do means no one else's mother has to do what his did to survive. He thinks Lay reads it on him, anyway.

***

Everything changes after a rally.

It’s meant to be a peaceful protest, this one over another murder of another black man by another cop, a demonstration by the people in this supposed democracy. It doesn’t turn out that way, but then again it never does, that was half the reason they were there in the first place, for when things went ugly. And ugly they went, some fucking idiot thinking throwing a brick at the cops will make things better. It doesn’t.

Yifan gets lost in the chaos, quickly. Smoke and shouting, cops firing rubber bullets and tear gas into the crowd, more hopped-up idiots fighting back. Yifan pulls a black bandana over the lower half of his face, does what he can to help people get out of the insanity. One woman trips and he shoulders his way over her to keep her from being trampled, slings her arm across her back and helps her limp to a friend outside of the fray. He doesn’t give her a chance to thank him before he’s diving back in, heart in his throat, blood singing in his veins. 

He catches glimpses of the rest; Jongdae punching a white man who’d tried to use the mayhem as a chance to get his hits in, brass knuckles flashing before crashing into his cheek. The man falls, hard, doesn’t get up. Sehun, picking a man up out of his broken wheelchair and sprinting off through the smoke. Minseok running past, bandada gone somehow, throwing him a salute and grinning with bloodied teeth.

Yifan sees it through a gap in the crowd. Lay, standing in front of someone, shielding them with his body. A cop in riot gear, baton raised. Yifan is sprinting before the baton comes crashing down, Lay twisting at the last second so it hits him in the upper back instead of the face. He crumples anyway, and Yifan’s throat aches on a yell. He doesn’t really remember barrelling into the cop, completely blindsiding him and sending them both crashing to the ground. He falls on top of the riot shield, pinning the cop underneath it, saving Yifan from a beating himself because it means he’s quicker to get up, moving at speeds he couldn’t dream of without the adrenaline. Lay is struggling to get up now, on his feet but hand still touching the ground for balance, so Yifan catches him around the waist and hauls him off, cutting through the remnants of a cloud of tear gas, coughing and spluttering.

They don’t stop running until the sounds of their breathing are louder than anything else, the noise of the rally turned riot lost in the blocks behind them. Yifan tugs Lay into an alley, props them both against the brick, breathing hard. Lay hisses when his back hits the wall and Yifan gasps, “Sorry sorry.”

“You fucking _idiot_ ,” Lay grits through his teeth, and Yifan snaps his head up to look at him, shocked. Lay’s eyes are dark and murderous. “They had _guns_ , they could’ve fucking-” He doesn’t let himself finish the sentence, grabs Yifan’s crystal pendant necklace in a tight brutal fist, and kisses him, hard.

It’s not a nice kiss, but none of their kisses ever are. Their teeth knock together, both of their mouths tasting of copper, whether from a punch in the fray or sharp teeth on tender skin, they didn’t know, or care. Lay slams him against the wall, twisting his fist until the necklace turned nearly garrote. 

“ _Never_ do that again,” Lay says, voice deadly serious. 

Yifan bares his teeth, “What was I supposed to do, let them arrest you? Let them kill you?”

“YES!” Lay yells, spit and blood hitting Yifan’s face. “That was the fucking plan! Get yourself out, anyone else second, and don’t be a fucking hero!”

Yifan leans forward, feeling hot and cold all over, feeling deranged. “Fuck you,” he sneers.

In a blink Lay had pulled out that pretty little knife and pressed it, right against Yifan’s carotid. Yifan couldn’t have stopped the moan that came out of his chest if he wanted to. He didn’t even try.

Lay’s eyes darken and a stillness falls over him. He’s panting, they both are, but he looks like a marble statue, like he should be on display. Like Apollo. Yifan has never wanted more to be a sacrifice.

Yifan can tell by the bite of the metal against his skin that it’s broken through, that blood was welling under the blade. They’re pressed together so tightly there’s no mistaking the way they’re both hard from this, bodies straining against each other. Lay’s eyes never waver from his, until they do, dropping to his mouth, to his throat. He licks his lips. He lets him go, leaving Yifan to slump against the brick, throat still bared, hands limp at his sides. Lay looks at him, wipes the bloody knife off on his jeans.

“Come on,” he says, and it isn’t a request.

Yifan follows him through the city. He’s sure, in some distant part of his mind, that people must be staring. They make a picture, no doubt, two dirty and bloodied Chinese punks. He doesn’t know what his face is doing. For the first time in maybe his entire life, he doesn’t care. Yifan just watches the way Lay’s shoulders move as he walks, lost in a daze. 

He doesn’t know how long it takes them to get to Lay’s apartment, only the shocking realization that’s where they must be, when the door shuts. Lay never lets anyone into his apartment. Yifan isn’t sure the rest of the group even know where it is, kept separate from their lives together in almost the same way he goes by Lay. Like he wants something of himself that doesn’t belong to them.

Yifan gets a glimpse of the room; a table covered in books and maps and papers, a tiny kitchen, a bed in the corner, like no one else ever shares it. Suddenly feeling like he’s prying into something that isn’t his to see, he ducks his head, toes off his shoes, shrugs off his jacket and hangs it on a waiting hook.

In an instant, Lay has him against the front door, hand around his throat, knife pressed to his belly. Yifan is snapped back to attention.

“Give me a word,” Lay says, quiet, certain. 

Yifan blinks, and then sneers when he realizes what he’s asking for. “I don’t need a fucking _safeword_ ,” he snarls and the hand at his throat disappears, Lay taking a full step back, knife still in his hand.

“A word, or I toss your ass out.” There’s no room for argument.

Breathing hard, trying not to keen at the loss of Lay’s body against his, he considers. “Antares,” he says, chin tilted up, daring Lay to mock him for it. He doesn’t. He just nods, repeats, “Antares.”

Slower this time, methodical, eyes on fire, Lay steps forward again. “Hands against the door,” he says, and Yifan obeys.

Lay raises the knife to Yifan’s throat again and Yifan swallows, Adam’s apple bobbing against the blade. Lay smirks, pulls the blade down his skin, not deep enough to cut, until he gets to Yifan’s t-shirt collar. The shirt is thin, worn, and the blade, after a first deep press that makes Yifan suck in a breath, parts beneath the glide of the knife. It takes a moment after the fabric has pulled apart and the cool air has hit his skin for Yifan to realize he’s been cut, collarbone to navel, a thin red line of blood. He’s hard again, shifts his hips when his mouth drops in a moan.

With two fingers, Lay gently traces the parted skin, gathering blood on his fingertips, smearing it against Yifan’s chest. He raises his bloodied fingers to Yifan’s mouth, and he opens, greedy, tongue swirling around the digits, lapping between them, sucking them clean. Lay presses the knife to his throat, pulls his fingers out of his mouth, replaces them with his tongue. He shoves a thigh between Yifan’s and conquers his mouth, methodical, ruthless. Yifan writhes against him, seeking more friction, forgets himself and grabs Lay’s hips with both hands.

The solid _CRACK_ of the backhand strike echoes through the room almost before Yifan’s head snaps to the side. He can’t tell if the blood in his mouth is from Lay’s fingers, or because he’s bitten himself. 

Before he can recover, Lay’s hand is squeezing his throat, forcing his chin up, forcing him to look into his eyes. Yifan feels the knife against his aching cock through his jeans and oh, _oh_ , that’s an entirely different kind of thrill. 

“I said,” Lay says, voice still even, icy, “hands against the door.”

Barely able to breathe and out of his mind with the lust and the icy fear of the knife against his cock, all he can do is whimper. 

Something desperate flashes in Lay’s eyes before he pulls back, spins Yifan, shoves his shoulders forward, yanks his hips back. Yifan presses his hands against the door, arches his back helplessly. Lay reaches around him, chest pressed to his back, knife still in his right hand, unbuttons his jeans and pulls down the zip. He dances the blade over his swollen cock through his briefs and Yifan bites his lip, hard, to hold in a wail.

Lay bites his shoulder, t-shirt still covering it only barely dulling the pain, drops the knife to the floor with a thud, and yanks his pants and briefs down to this thighs. Yifan hears the sound of a lube packet being opened before the pad of a finger is pressed at his entrance. He presses his hips back and Lay chuckles, slaps his left ass cheek. Yifan jumps at the same time Lay presses in, starting a ruthless rhythm immediately. All Yifan can do is moan.

Two fingers, another slap, then three, which earns him two. Yifan is mindless now, rocking back onto Lay’s fingers, moaning and whimpering with each thrust, speaking nonsense, “please, yes, _fuck_ ,” not all of it in English. Lay finds his prostate and Yifan feels like he’s been electrocuted. 

When Lay pulls his fingers out Yifan snarls like an animal. Lay grabs the hair at the back of his head and yanks it backwards, the angle painful. 

“Say please,” Lay says, voice finally rough with need, with what they’re doing to each other.

Yifan whines, and Lay tightens his hand in his hair. 

“Ah, ah, p- hnnnn, please,” Yifan finally manages. 

Lay shakes Yifan’s head using his grip on his hair. “Please _what_?” he demands.

Gasping like a fish Yifan spits out, “Please _fuck me_ , god _fuck_ ,” and Lay lets him go, grabs his hips instead.

Lay bites the junction where neck meets shoulder when he presses himself in, steady, relentless. He doesn’t give Yifan a second to adjust to the pleasure-pain, the fullness, just sets in with fucking him. He’s brutal about it, unwavering, their skin slapping together loud in Yifan’s ears, punching sounds out of his throat he’s never made in his life. When Lay finds the angle that hits his prostate with every stroke, Yifan _shakes_.

Lay reaches around him, smears his palm against Yifan’s chest, collarbone to navel. Yifan doesn’t understand until Lay takes his cock in his hand that he was gathering the still-weeping blood as lube. 

Yifan comes after two blood-slick strokes, silent scream, vision whiting out at the edges. Distantly, he hears Lay curse, fucking hard into him to chase his own release. When Lay spills inside of him, Yifan feels it like a brand.

It’s long minutes before their heart rates slow down, Lay softening inside Yifan, both of them pressed against each other and the door, awkwardly. Finally the come and blood combined on his chest becomes too uncomfortable, and Yifan shifts. 

Lay pulls away, loose and sloppy in a way his movements never are, and when Yifan turns he can see the exhaustion in his face. He doesn’t mention it, knows the other man wouldn’t appreciate it if he did. Lay tucks himself back into his underwear and pulls his jeans back up around his hips, keeping them unbuttoned and unzipped, and shuffles to the door that must be to the bathroom. His back where the cop hit him with the baton is already blossoming with a bruise.

Yifan closes his eyes, still leaning back against the door, not bothering to adjust his clothes. He opens them again, sensing being watched, and Lay is standing there, eyes roving over his body. Realizing he’s been caught, Lay purses his lips, and Yifan can almost imagine a blush on his cheeks. Almost.

Lay tosses a damp washcloth at him and he catches it easily, wipes himself down, hissing at the drag against the cut on his chest. He looks up when he’s done and Lay has a frown playing at the edges of his face.

“Don't forget antiseptic, for that,” he says, gesturing to the cut. Yifan feels a swell of something dangerously close to affection rise in his throat. He swallows it down, and nods, uses pulling his pants back up and taking off the tattered remains of his shirt as an excuse to look away.

When he looks up again, they just stare at each other for a long moment, both of them unsure what the other is trying to see. Finally, Yifan blinks, scratches the back of his head. He tosses the washcloth back at Lay and slips his feet back into his shoes, shrugs the jacket over his shoulders, zips it. By the time he’s done, Lay is already turned away from him, shuffling toward the bed. Lay steps out of his jeans at the foot of the bed and Yifan opens the door, slips out, closes it again.

The images clash in his mind the entire walk home; Lay before the rally, proud unofficial leader telling them all not to get fucking killed; the baton crashing down on him; the cop, face inches from Yifan’s; Lay in the alley; Lay in his apartment with a knife at Yifan’s throat; Lay in his underwear, exhaustion in every muscle. Yifan collapses onto his own sheets, dreams of Lay, horseback, felled by an enemy arrow, too far away for Yifan to save.

***

Lay starts inviting him over, after that. Well, “inviting” is a strong word for saying, “Come over,” without an ounce of asking in it. Yifan always does.

It’s the same as it was in the bathrooms and alleys; harsh, quick, often bloody, always bruising. There’s a bed now, eventually, after a few weeks where Lay and Yifan both seem uncomfortable with Yifan going farther than the entrance. The first time they fuck on the bed is awkward, like their limbs don’t work together with the softness of sheets and pillows and mattress. Lay brings out rope, the next time, ties his wrists and ankles to the bed, face down, bleeding him and then fucking him mercilessly. After, catching a glimpse in his mirror and then twisting until the marks make sense, Yifan realizes he’s written the Chinese character for fortitude across his back. 

It’s not awkward after that, at least not in bed. 

Yifan still leaves immediately after, Lay never saying a word about it. No cuddles, no kisses. No goodbyes. 

Yifan doesn’t need more than that. He knows he’s useful to the group, does his share, sometimes more than, and never complains. Lay looks at him like he’s proud of him, once, for a suggestion he makes. Yifan makes a terrible joke to cover the way it sets off fizzing in his chest.

***

One night, a few months into their new arrangement, Yifan knocks at the door, and Lay answers in sweatpants and a loose shirt, hair mussed. Yifan had needed to stop by his mother’s after the rare early morning meeting, just to drop something off. Lay had told him to come by after, but Lay must have fallen immediately to sleep.

“Oh,” Yifan says, shuffling his feet, “you’re, I’ll just” he hooks a thumb over his shoulder, is already turning when Lay stops him.

“No, uh, you can,” he gestures feebly inside, holding the door open wider. Yifan is frozen, half turned. Lay rolls his eyes, “I’m hungry, I have leftovers from my grandmother, want some?” Lay’s grandmother is a saint and makes the best yan du xian Yifan has ever tasted. He shuffles in, awkwardness overpowered by homemade soup.

It’s the first time Yifan goes to Lay’s apartment and they don’t fuck. They sit at Lay’s tiny crowded table, slurping soup and murmuring compliments with their mouths full. Once the food is finished, Yifan takes the bowls to the sink, washes them, and Lay continues a conversation they’d all been having about homelessness, what they can do as a group, who they can support, who they can give some very direct nudges to stop fucking up innocent, good people’s lives. It’s a few hours of heated discussion, sometimes agreeing, sometimes disagreeing, before Lay yawns mid-argument. Yifan looks at him, at the softness blurring his face, the way he looks young, and beautiful. He leaves, making excuses that Lay doesn’t question too hard. He rides for an hour through the city on his way home, trying to clear the constriction around his heart.

***

The next time they fuck, it’s after an initiative the group had been supporting fails, just a week after a storm ravages the city and ten homeless people die of exposure. They’re both furious, both powerless, both ready to burn the city to the ground. Lay whips him until Yifan can’t feel anything anymore, and then he fucks him until he can’t feel anything but _him_.

***

Minseok shows up to the next meeting, this one at Junmyeon’s big apartment, with a dirty and battered young cat tucked into his leather jacket. The entire group pitches in on getting the cat, a pretty black and white little lady once she’s clean, fed and groomed and checked for serious injuries. She’s wild with fury at all the manhandling at first, but calms down eventually, finally curling up in Jongdae’s lap exhausted. 

They all want to keep her, but most of them can’t, between landlords and allergies (their own or roommates and family) and simple lack of space and time to care for her. Yifan offers, even though he knows his landlord would throw him out immediately if she found out, and he really can’t afford another place if he loses this one. Lay glares at him and immediately says he’ll take her, that his landlady allows pets and has cats herself anyway, might help him get a litterbox and food and toys for her. 

Yifan doesn’t offer to help settle her in, or watch her when Lay can’t. Something about their...whatever it is feels like it shouldn’t be put out in the open like that, shared with the group. Some part of him is sure they all know by the way Baekhyun has stopped flirting with Lay, the way Minseok is only ever brotherly to him now, all of them assuming he and Lay will want to work together, sit next to each other, asking Yifan where Lay is if he’s late to a meeting. But it still doesn’t feel right. Like he’s claiming Lay. Like Lay is something he might consider his.

***

It’s different, with the cat. Not much, not really, she tends to keep to herself for the most part. But it does feel a bit weird, being fucked while wearing a ballgag with a cat not ten feet away, watching. Lay catches him glancing at the cat during that session, looks over himself and breaks the mood entirely by bursting out laughing. Yifan can’t help laughing too, awkward and impossible though it may be with a gag in his mouth. Lay, still laughing, takes the gag off of him, gasps, “Antares, Antares, I’m sorry, the cat is too much,” and Yifan is giggling too hard to mind. 

Once they’ve stopped laughing Lay grins at him and pulls him into the bathroom, kisses him against the door, takes both of their erections in one hand. His hand isn’t quite big enough, so Yifan helps, wrapping his enormous palm around them both, their hands overlapping in a way that feels more intimate than anything they’ve ever done before. Yifan comes first, lets Lay paint him with his come after. They clean up side by side at the sink, both of them trying to suppress smiles and failing. Lay ducks around the bathroom door exaggeratedly, and the cat looks up and meows at them, setting them both giggling again like boys.

They exile the cat to the bathroom, after that, always chuckling when they free her and she walks out with her tail in the air like an affronted queen.

***

Sometimes, on the increasingly frequent days they just sit together, talking or working, or reading side by side, the cat will jump up into Lay's lap. Without fail, the man says, “Oh, hello,” with the same tone as when his mother calls him, loving, easy. He always gets back to what he was doing before, idly petting the cat. Periodically, she will look up at him with her big eyes, and mew, and he will distractedly drop a kiss to her head. 

The first time it happens, Yifan makes quick and sloppy excuses and leaves. _You're jealous of a fucking cat_ , he admits to himself, finally, in the privacy of his own mind. He feels stupid for it, helpless. His heart feels like a cavern he has no hope of filling. He feels stupid for that, too.

***

Lay tries to be gentle with him, the next time they fuck. Yifan doesn't realize that's what's happening at first, assumes the slow, wet kisses are a warm up. It isn't until Lay presses a kiss to the inside of his knee while he's working two slow fingers inside him that it clicks. It feels so much like pity Yifan distantly wonders if he's going to throw up. He considers safewording, until the anger kicks in. He flips them, in a twisting move right out of Zitao's martial arts training. Ends up on top, pinning Lay's hands to the bed. Lay looks shocked, for a moment, and maybe even hurt, but the expression passes too quickly for Yifan to be sure. 

When Yifan growls, “Quit toying around and _fuck me_ ,” Lay grimaces, and then nods. He executes his own flip, thrusts into him in the same move, the pain and the shock of it making Yifan throw his head back and grin like a feral dog. They both end up covered in bites and nail scratches, in the end, flat on their backs and panting side by side. Lay tosses an arm over his eyes and sighs, deep and weary. Yifan dresses quietly and leaves.

***

Not long after that, Lay has to take a weekend trip to his grandmother’s, and asks Yifan to watch the cat. He hands him a key to the apartment when he asks, body as steady and certain as when he’s telling Yifan to get on his knees. Yifan doesn’t quite stifle the shake in his fingers when he takes the key, says yes. Lay doesn’t mention it. 

When Yifan shows up with a backpack of things he’ll need, Lay tells him he’s left him a toothbrush, cleared a drawer for his clothes. Yifan stares at him like a deer in headlights. Lay just presses a hand to Yifan’s chest at the door, and then he’s gone.

It’s largely uneventful, once Yifan can stop wringing his hands and sitting on the very edge of the loveseat cushion like someone’s going to burst in and demand to know what he’s doing there. The cat (Lay never did name her, just called her “cat” and Yifan had found it too endearing to ever ask) curls up on him and gives him a look like he’s a fucking idiot but an excellent pillow, and purrs. Yifan figures that’s all the permission he ever really needed anyway.

Lay comes home a day late, but Yifan had expected it, mentally added the extra day the minute he heard it was his grandmother he was visiting. She’s the type of woman who loved her grandson deeply, wouldn’t let him go until he’d been fed up right, glowing with the health only affection and home cooked meals can bring. She was right, too, about Lay needing the extra time, he still looks tired, but less like he’s losing his will to fight. 

He smiles at Yifan, reading Sartre on the couch, the cat abandoning his lap to waltz up to Lay, rubbing herself on his legs and meowing huffily at him. Lay shuffles his things to one hand and picks her up, pressing a kiss to her head. Yifan ignores the jab of pain it causes him. 

Lay pads into the bedroom section of the apartment, passing Yifan as he does. He pauses there, next to him, sets the cat down, cups Yifan’s cheek, and kisses his mouth, softly. Yifan doesn't close his eyes, frozen, isn't sure he even kisses back. 

By the time he stops waiting for the catch, the kiss is over, Lay humming while he unpacks his things. Yifan doesn't press his fingers to his lips like some silly girl in a film. He wants to, but he doesn't. He makes eye contact with the cat, who considers him, and then tosses her head like he's too stupid to bother with, and struts away.

***

The kisses become a regular thing, and Yifan eventually stops being startled by it. Kisses hello, kisses goodbye. Kisses for reasons Yifan can't begin to understand. Never in public, for obvious reasons. Never in front of the group, either, even though Sehun and Junmyeon are shameless in their affection. But in private, in Lay's apartment, they're doled out, measured at first, deliberate, and then more and more loosely. Yifan counts them, at first, even if he hates that he does. Eventually, somewhere around the triple digits, they stop feeling like a currency he needs to hoard.

***

Lay asks him to stay, one night, after a rally that hadn't gone completely to shit but had still exhausted them both. Yifan had followed him on autopilot, after, didn't realize his mistake until Lay had already closed the door behind them. 

He considers leaving again, feet and body aching at the city blocks to his bed, but Lay interrupts his thoughts by taking his hand, lacing their fingers together, tugging him toward the bed. Yifan goes, limply taking off his shirt, his jeans. Isn't sure he'll be able to manage sex, and stands by the side of the bed wondering if he should say so. Lay looks at him, pats the empty space next to him.

“Stay,” he says around a yawn. “Just. Stay.”

Yifan stays. 

After that, Yifan always stays. 

***

Yifan had fallen in love with Lay the first moment, there, in the bar, his beautiful hands flipping his beautiful knife. He lied to himself, he was very good at lying to himself, but he could say, now, that he'd loved him then and every moment since. 

It takes Lay falling asleep at the table for Yifan to realize Lay loved him back.

It's three in the morning when Yifan comes in, closing the door as softly as he can, and sees Lay, passed out on top of a book. He just looks for a moment, watching his chest rise and fall, tracing the lines of him with his eyes. 

Taking in a view he realizes, suddenly, no man but him has ever seen.

Yifan steps up to him on quiet feet, takes his shoulder in a gentle hand. “Lay,” he murmurs, shaking his shoulder a little. The man grumbles, pulls his head up with sleepy crankiness, gives him a half hearted glare, drops his head back onto his arms again. Yifan smiles, runs his hand across his back, soothing, strokes through his disheveled hair. Heart full to bursting, he presses a kiss to Lay's head, and Lay arches into it, just like the cat.

“Yixing,” he says, mouth still pressed against his hair. Yixing hums a question in response. “Come to bed.”

With a grumble, Yixing pulls himself to his feet, taking the arm Yifan offers to help. It's a groggy silly dance across the few feet of floor, Yixing's feet uncoordinated, weight mostly supported by Yifan. Since he's already dressed for bed, Yifan lets Yixing flop face first onto the mattress, chuckling while he takes off his clothes. He gets under the covers, prodding Yixing until they're both settled properly. 

In the few moments it takes Yifan to turn off the light, Yixing falls asleep, face turned toward him. Yifan wraps an arm around his middle, puts his head on the same pillow, whispers in the air between them, “You love me.”

Yixing hums, presses closer. Yifan falls asleep with a smile.

**Author's Note:**

> SO. that happened. 
> 
> if I missed anything you think should be tagged PLEASE let me know!!! 
> 
> comments are lovely, even if it's just, like. the knife emoji 25 times. or "what the fuck, riley" or anything your heart desires, really. I can also be found on twitter @nasaplates


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